Tagged "Rayman Legends"

Out of the five or so new releases that last week gave us, Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze has managed to chart the highest, entering at a respectable #9.

Rayman Legends leaps back up from #33 to #10 due to the belated Xbox One and PlayStation 4 conversions, while Rambo: The Video Game makes its mark at #21.

Despite having a sizeable cult following, EDF 2025 failed to make the top 40.

New PS Vita releases YS: Memories of Celceta and Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God failed to enter too, but the former did make #1 in the PS Vita chart.

Even though PS Vita retail releases are thin on the ground, that does surprise us slightly, especially with The LEGO Movie Videogame performing incredibly well elsewhere in chart land.

Traveller’s Tales’ blockbuster is the UK’s #1 for a second week running, with sales up 7%. Indeed, LEGO fever has struck the top 40 – no less than nine LEGO games are present this week, four of which have re-entered. It’s a right old bloc party.

For a second week in a row it’s a busy week for new releases, even if the term ‘new’ is pushing it a bit for two of them.

Rayman Legends, for one, isn’t all that fresh. The armless chap makes a belated appearance on both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 this week, available for around £25 to compensate for tardiness. If you missed out on Rayman Legends last year, then you missed one of the most finely crafted platformers of recent times.

Then we have Far Cry: The Wild Expedition, which comprises of Far Cry Classic, Far Cry 2 and 3, and the neon-hued Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. Far Cry Classic only hit the download services last week, and a total non-appearance of reviews would suggest Ubisoft ‘accidentally’ forget to send out review code. Hmm. Far Cry 2 is knocking on a bit now; so much so that it can easily be found for under £3. Far Cry 3 and fantasy spin-off Blood Dragon are both fantastic however, although you may want to rethink playing them back to back – even with a total reskin and an ‘80s sci-fi vibe, Blood Dragon is still highly similar to Far Cry 3 in respect of enemy AI and other general mechanics.

Like Rayman Legends, this collection – out on PS3 and Xbox 360 – should set you back around £25.

If you’d rather storm jungles with an ageing action hero instead, there’s Rambo: The Video Game. The trailers for it managed to get tongues waggling, but for all the wrong reasons – it looks beyond poor, with Stallone resembling some kind of muscular store mannequin. From the looks of things it uses the same engine as Teyon’s Heavy Fire: Shattered Spear, a budget release that tried to combine Call of Duty with Time Crisis but failed miserably. Approach with extreme caution.

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is another that has stirred up some unforeseen discussion. Some critics love the fact that it’s more of the same, while others felt the opposite. Even back when it was first announced it was clear that it was never going to reinvent the wheel (barrel?).

As such, scores have been mixed – everything from 6/10 from GameSpot to 10/10 from Destructoid. As we said during our weekly Nintendo download round-up, it’s bound to sell well amongst the current Wii U community but probably won’t sell systems.

Worryingly, the next big Wii U release isn’t until the end of May, leaving just a few third-party releases to fill the void. And we really do mean just a few – Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, LEGO: The Hobbit and some Phineas and Ferb thing are the only games on the near horizon.

Anyway, back to games that you can buy this week. Last week saw two niche PS Vita titles that performed well in the PS Vita chart – Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Toukiden: The Age of Demons entered at #1 and #2 respectively. Will YS: Memories of Celceta and Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God do as well? With a name like that, the latter deserves to at least.

IGN claims that Ys is surprisingly accessible, while Play magazine said that the ‘Roguelike’ Sorcery Saga is rather short for an RPG. Both have managed to bag plenty of 8/10 reviews, so it’s hard to imagine RPG fans being disappointed with either.

Back in the days when arcade machines were synonymous with gaming rather than gambling, a simple way for developers to see if they had a hit on their hands was to put it on test in a local arcade. If a player died repeatedly yet still continued to put money into the machine it was a very good sign. Sometimes it was even a confounding factor into whether an arcade game went into full production or not.

Some four decades later, the desire to get straight back into a game after dying is still a distinction of quality. Later sections in Rayman Legends are tough, requiring pixel perfect timing, yet we found ourselves trying again and again until we finally got past our proverbial hurdles.

Not once did we feel the need to walk away (read: rage quit) as every level feels as miraculously designed as the last. It also helps that there’s no ‘game over’ screen, or even lives for that matter. You can try, try and try again without penalty, and just like in Rayman Origins checkpoint placing remains impeccable.

the more people able to experience this, the better place the world will be

Although originally designed to be manoeuvred with the Wii U’s GamePad, controlling helper character Murfy with a joypad works surprisingly well. Just one push of the ‘B button’ orders the green hued dude to flick switches, move objects or tickle bad guys into submission. The simplicity of doing so is good thing too, considering that Murfy shows up quite often to lend a hand.

The levels themselves are longer than before and aren’t punctuated as often, which helps incredibly to keep the pace fast flowing. Settings are more imaginative also, including a medieval castle with a wooded grove, a couple of Mexican-influenced worlds featuring rampaging luchadores and super-sized foodstuffs, and a set of trials based in ancient Greece.

We were dreading having to dip into the swimming levels, but even these are surprisingly great – character movement remains fluid and responsive, while the stealth elements added to the underwater sections work far greater than we first imagined. Trust us on that one.

If any mega franchise was going to be able to dislodge Grand Theft Auto V from the top of the UK chart after just one week, it was FIFA.

And that’s exactly what has happened, even with sales of FIFA 14 down 24% that of FIFA 13.

Chart-Track believes that’s “possibly due to all the money spent last week and also perhaps due to the nature of a transitional year, where consumers may be delaying this purchase until PS4/Xbox One versions are available”.

GTA V slips down to #2, with sales down 82% from launch week.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, PES 2014 and The Last of Us finish off the top 5.

Price cuts help Rayman Legends get a leg up back into the top 10 this week, where it’s back at #10.

We were under the impression that Activision decided not to give Diablo 3 a great deal of promotion, only to learn that an extensive TV advertising campaign has been under way. Just shows how often we switch on the gogglebox, eh?

There has definitely been a curious lack of reviews though, considering the hack ‘n’ slash RPG launched yesterday in both the UK and the US.

Eurogamer’s review was one of the first to go up, where it was given 9/10 and called “a bold, bloody, opulent romp built around a ruthlessly simple distillation of action role-playing”.

EDGE meanwhile gave it a 7, saying that “Diablo still contains enough impulsive monster-slaying to entertain, but the trek from its home on PC has left it diminished”.

PC gamers were treated to a collector’s edition upon release but that’s not the case for this console iteration. The pre-order pack does contain a bonus ‘Infernal Helm’ accessory though, which no doubt almost every player will be running around proudly sporting.

If you’d rather be farming crops than loot, Farming Simulator 2013 is also out this week on both PS3 and Xbox 360. It’s not the first of its kind to make the jump from PC – the 3DS gained a spin-off from the curiously popular PC series last year.

With a product description proudly boasting of “more varied crops with additional maturation stages” you can probably guess that this is hardly going to be a pulse racing experience.

These farming sims sell ridiculously well on PC, and with a £20-odd price tag, we could see this one performing better than expected in next week’s chart.

After a mild drought the PS Vita gets a double dose of decent games this week – Rayman Legends and Killzone Mercenary.

Ubisoft did once claim that Rayman Legends would have all the content from the big screen version, but it transpires that 28 levels are missing. There are some exclusive touch-screen mini-games, but whether they’re decent substitutes or not is debatable.

It would seem that Deep Silver’s acquisition of Volition is paying off – Saints Row IV has claimed the UK top 40 top spot for a second week running.

Last week it was reported that over a million copies have been sold so far, so perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that it’s still the UK’s no. 1.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist remains at #2 for a second week running. That’s followed by new entry Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn. Square-Enix yanked the digital version last week due to sever problems.

The not-quite-as-good-as-we-hoped Disney Infinity – which we’re reviewing later today – drops from #3 down to #4.

At #6 it’s a new entry for Rayman Legends, with sales up 20 percent from the equally great Rayman Origins. According to the individual format chart it’s the Wii U version that has proven the most popular, followed by Xbox 360 and then PS3.

You’d think that after last week’s slew of new big name releases that this week would be looking a little bare. Amazingly for a summer month, that’s not the case.

We’ve got not one but two games that are finally with us after facing lengthy delays.

Whereas the extra development time for Rayman Legends has clearly paid off – by adding a dollop of Rayman Origins levels into the mix for good measure – Lost Planet 3’s extended development apparently has not.

Reviews of Rayman Legends appeared online earlier this week where it was met to an overwhelmingly positive response, including 10/10 from Eurogamer and a 9 from EDGE.

The Official Nintendo Magazine also praised the Wii U version – which is the lead format for the 2D platformer, lest you forget – which made the team excited all over again about the Wii U’s GamePad and the potential it offers for asymmetrical play. They handed it a handsome 92%.

We are yet to see any reviews of the PS Vita version, but if the belated conversion of Rayman Origins was anything to go by it should be a cracker.

As for Lost Planet 3, well… it has found few fans so far.

Polygon’s 7.0 is one of the highest scores it has been given, and it goes against the grain of most. For comparison’s sake, it received 4/10s from both Eurogamer and the Metro, while SPOnG gave it 4.5. The Official Xbox Magazine meanwhile thought it was merely mediocre, giving it a 5/10.

Most reviewers seem to agree that it’s a mystery why Capcom bothered with it in the first place. The original was hardly a classic and Lost Planet 2 bombed.

Then we’ve got Killer is Dead, a spiritual successor of sorts to Killer7 and No More Heroes. Yes – it’s another dose of Suda 51 ludicrousness.

Or is it? Lead character Mondo Zappa is a serious-minded protagonist, reports EDGE. They really enjoyed the combat: “Killer Is Dead has Grasshopper’s most satisfying combat since No More Heroes, compensating for the lack of physical sensation with more varied and flexible systems,” but said that “it gives us pretty much exactly what we were anticipating”. It walked away with a 6.

Eurogamer on the other hand found it rather mundane, giving it a 5. “At various points, Killer is Dead shoots for the visual surrealism of El Shaddai, the hyperbolic intensity of Asura’s Wrath, the oddball melodrama of Deadly Premonition, the extravagant showmanship of Bayonetta. It misses by a wide margin every time.”